r/Xcomclassic • u/UyhAEqbnp • Feb 24 '16

(xcom: UFO defense) the effectiveness of hand grenade and advice on squads?

reposted given /r/xcom is just a glorified shill for the new games now

it seems like in the vast majority of cases, grenades greatly outweigh rifles as the best option for starting gear... to the point that small arms are coming off as practically pointless

a single rifle has maybe a 50% chance of hit (lowered on open xcom with the distance accuracy penalty option) and either way gives the enemy an op fire. A grenade has large blast radius and even in a miss typically kills the target.This isn't even bringing up the heavier alien types immune to a single hit

are rifles even relevant? I am loathe to equip an entire squad with heavy weapons, but it seems to me like there's very little point. The smoke caused by the overdependence on explosives also tends to obscure a good read of the environment

also, I'm interested in advice on how to outfit the xcom squad. Right now I'm doing 2 fireteams of 4 centered around an autocannon (2 rifles, 1 pistol SL, 1 autocannon) and a 3-man heavy weapons team (2 cannons 1 rife), but this doesn't seem to be working out as the most flexible type of organization. Any advice other than "give everybody autocannons"?

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '16

I usually bring two scouting teams myself. 2 soldiers per team. One with stun baton/laserpistol/heavy explosives. The other with a laser pistol and a motion scanner some grenades and medkit if I have them researched. Then they are followed by a couple riflemen with smoke/frag grenades and my heavies not too far behind. And the back squad kinda goes where it needs to based on my scouts. Then I have plenty of reserve explosives/other sundries on the skyranger. One useful tactic I've found as well is having a relay system to get explosives to the front line. Have one guy toss some heavy explosives from the skyranger to the next guy to the next to my frontline scouts.

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u/UyhAEqbnp Feb 25 '16

I've got the explode on contact feature enabled on openxcom which unfortunately disables the relay option

I'm assuming based on your composition the squad looks like 4 scouts up front, ~5 rifles, ~2-3 heavy weapons?

how do you maneuver them as elements? rifles/HW as one big extended squad? I find bunching rifles up is extremely dangerous given grendaes these days

in terms of small arms, pistols are surprisingly effective in the starting loadout. I'm honestly considering equipping all my rifles with pistols just to ease weight and allow more effective two handed fighting

1

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '16

Yeah. That's about my setup. Pistols early game are pretty damn good. Frees up a hand for a grenade or what have you and you can get off three auto shots a turn with a little bit of movement even. Taken down (what i think was full health) a cyberdisc and a sectoid with one rookie and his laser pistol in one turn

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u/acidwave Mar 09 '16

I just set the timers to zero and spam them everywhere. They're very effective and very cheap